Creating Space‘s “Art of Craft” exhibition was yesterday and it went really well. With two children in tow I ended up arriving with just 20 minutes available to set up my stand!
I’d found some blue denim in my stash (bought for making jeans a few years ago, but never used). It was an incredibly long length and I’m so glad I took it. Half way through setting up I realised I needed more table space, and was able to grab a couple of small tables to put at the end, the cloth happily covering them too. The denim had a second advantage, it showed off the yarns, shawls and photos really well, the dark colour complimenting them. I shall be using denim in the future, though I may cut the piece down into shorter more manageable lengths, or think about how to cover a table more effectively in the future (perhaps with a skirt to hide everything underneath) and then a separate cover for the top.
The photos I had printed were everything I hoped they would be. I’ve never had photos professionally printed from my digital pictures. I’ve had years of disappointments with developed photos from film, so I didn’t believe that the photos I saw on my screen could be replicated in a print. I was wrong, they could! I was lucky to find a firm in Cambridge1 who produce real photos from the digital images, and the results were stunning.
The photos I put onto 12″x12″ scrapbooking cards. I had intended to display them in an album but in the end I preferred them spread out on the table (they were the main reason I needed a longer table). For future shows I will have a selection of photos on open display and more will be in an album. I also wonder about making some of my flower photos available to buy as prints. I shall have to explore that option.
I didn’t in the end have enough time to put descriptions on all my photos (a task made slightly harder by some of the backgrounds being very dark and my needing either a silver gel pen or some white ink for a dip pen, neither of which I currently have). I shall now be aiming to keep my printed portfolio up to date for future shows, complete with descriptions, so that I can use it without having a rush just before a show. I shall also endevour to have descriptions of some of the yarns, and the creative processes behind their creation. For example, I was showing the three completed Tour de Fleece skeins, along with the original dyed fibre and some spun singles, with no explanation of the colour experiment I was working on.
Some of Friday evening was spent re-winding skeins of yarn and tying them up with ribbons. I was surprised how long this task actually took, and in the end didn’t display all my yarn, as I simply ran out of time. On the morning before the show I ironed my woven shawls so that they looked their best. So one of my lessons for the future is that it takes much longer to get prepared for a show than it’s possible to imagine.
Harriette enjoyed her day out modelling the time travelling shawl (which just needed a couple of days recovering from being stored in a vacuum bag (moth proof storage) and no washing or ironing/steaming to get it looking its best). There were two highlights of the day for me. Firstly, the great variety of makers we have in the group. Quilting, dyeing, felting, printing, painting, drawing, spinning (from the finest lace to wonderful art yarns), knitting and weaving were all beautifully represented. The second highlight was having the children with me, taking an interest in what I was doing and then also spending their day making crafts (knitting, weaving and modelling with play-doh and plasticine). They came home with an award from Lyn for being brilliant helpers and very well behaved.
I keep talking about “in the future”. Well, Creating Space are planning on doing another show, but more about that closer to the time!
- the firm used were Streamline Imaging and I’m happy to recommend them for good quality prints and excellent service.